Lusophone Masculinities and COVID-19 responses:

Despite notable development in the realm of masculinities since the last decades of the 20th century, with significant growth in literature, studies of the category “men” are still facing some resistance within the IR academia. Therefore, this paper engages in international politics via a comparative method to scrutinise performances of Lusophone masculinities in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. On the one hand, the COVID-19 has bared the failure of the far-right strongmen. Bolsonaro`s Brazil fits in this tale. The presidential pandemic response has been marked by a tough-guy embodiment and rhetoric, striving to downplay the viral threat. Indeed, his parroting of Trump foreign policies has led Brazil to a Diplomatic spat with China. On the other hand, left-wing masculinities are praised as a synonym of a successful outcome. Portugal President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is a master in symbolic leadership, managing his nation to an exemplary response that became as famous as the picture of the president acting ´as any common citizen` in a supermarket. Nonetheless, there is a high risk of academic dishonesty if someone else tries to oversimplify this same structural thought such as, far-right = lousy response vis-à-vis left-wing = good response and portrays this scheme as a worldly-rule. In this sense, this paper is based upon post-positivist epistemologies alongside post-structuralism theoretical framework. Moreover, this paper outlines the genealogy of the Lusophone masculinities, assessing the formation of the modern gender system through postcolonialism theory along with a critical feminist viewpoint. This decolonial exercise helps to assess Mr Bolsonaro´s hypermasculinity within a historical approach